Ah, the first Labor Day weekend in my life without a care in the world. How long can it last? Even the garage sales are better in Colorado. Less junk, you might say. It says a lot about the intellect of a neighborhood when I can pick up a professional set of ringhead bow pencils for a buck, and the lady said a half hour earlier a man got an entire set of map-making tools, all solid brass and wrapped in velvet, for five bucks. Collector’s items.
Here’s a photo of my haul that cost $3.20. Yep, that original set of United Airlines playing cards, back when such things were often free. See the gold tinted aviator shades? And my wooden handled screwdriver? Mine, all mine.[Author's note 2017: the beautiful aviator glasses fell off my motorcycle on a trip to Neversummer a few weeks later.]
Boy, did I pick the right place for some custom work on the batbike (don’t tell Marion I called it that, she wants it to have a girl name). It’s called “Extreme Hitch” and the first thing the guy said was that motorcycle was “pretty fantastic”. That’s the kind of outfit I want for custom work. I have a written estimate for a trailer hitch and depending on finances in the next four days, I don’t think I could get a better quality job done.
I had concluded my motorcycle headlight had been installed upside down. Upon dismantling the entire assembly, I see that Sarasota had micky-moused all the major parts. The bracket held the retaining ring wrongly and the filament hood (the little metal shield inside the bulb that directs low beam downward) were a mismatched set. An hour of twisting metal and bending tabs got it shining the right way. The hitch shop, if from what I saw, should have no trouble fabricating the new faring brace.
This morning I took yet another bike path through a creek area. Denver has really preserved the setting along these waterways. The flora is left natural for a hundred yards on either bank and every half mile seems to find a park or picnic area. If you want tenements built right up to a stagnant ditch, you could visit any of the “rivers” that flow through Miami. For those who like politics, explain why both Colorado and Florida have water shortages in the summer. (Hint: the reasons are polar opposites, Florida is, how to put this, drowning in water.)
Before I forget, I won some microscope slides in a bet. The sale ladies had a hand sized gadget that nobody could identify. To me it looked like a fancy vice grip, but too elegantly chromed and detailed for that. I wagered if they let me take it out of the box, I’d figure it out. I almost lost, as it had no brand name or identifying marks. But I noticed a tiny set screw, like the kind on eyeglass hinges. Ah, then a 4” strip of that cellophane typewriter ribbon used on IBM Selectrics that appeared to be in the box by mistake. Oho, a tiny but dried up bottle of fingernail polish. I got it from just that, no other clues than seeing it, but seeing it won’t help. I got it. Can you?
It was a golf ball monogrammer. The plastic casing of the box turned out to be alphabet letters once we knew what to look for. They were meant to be punched out of the case, like model airplane parts, except these looked like sets of false teeth. You put the letters in the grip, secure with the tiny screw, stamp the golf ball, and when the ink dries, coat it with clear polish. QED. Sorry, no photo. I forgot the camera on the way to morning coffee, where I read more Ann Coulter. The lady certainly has an education I admire, though that does not extend to how she uses it. The intellectual content of her writing totals zero percent. Most of the people she insults I have never heard of. But the fact they are actors, senators, and the like betray how different our environments must be.
I don’t think I will ever become educated enough to care who won an Oscar or the sordid details of how this is done by today’s talentless women, nor ever be paid enough to give a bleeding hoot which president falsely claimed to be Jewish. Yet here is a woman so far more educated than I, dare I say if I’d had a fraction of the resources poured into her schooling, I would by now likely be one her targets. To Coulter, the lies people tell to get elected are such real concerns that she is moved to publish 300 page books on the matter. I accede to her superior knowledge in those realms. (Though I wonder if she can play bass, wire up a transistor, or tell me what a mercaptan does.) I would like to meet the woman some day, for I do not question the clarity of her brainwaves once she latches on to something.
Today’s novelty is this bed frame built from 6” PVC. I gave it a rap and it is pretty darn solid. When I think of pipe furniture, I envision patio chairs, so this rather massive oddity gets my daily award for first time actually seeing something of the kind. I didn’t get the price. It was in the Goodwill at Chambers and Iliff, where I went on the suggestion of Marion’s neighbor.
It was late afternoon by the time I crossed back into Aurora. So I went to an afternoon matinee at the Movie Tavern, deciding on “The Expendables 2”. Golly gosh, my generation of actors is getting up there and the half-shaven Karate-types trying to replace them are about as cookie-cutter as they come. The movie theme is completely worn out, wrung out, and hung out to dry. But lots of guts and gore, none of the Hollywood bloodless, curseless deaths of yore. The renegade Ruskies are still terrible shots and I’ll spoil one scene for you, but it isn’t really crucial to the plot.
The team finds an American town in the middle of Russia. Right down to the coke machines and jukeboxes. I say what a clever budget-minded idea for the producers. The explanation is it was a mock-up used by the Red Army to practice for their invasion of America. We’ll assume they invaded east LA.
It was the whole enchilada for me. Movie Tavern has a real tavern out front and inside the theatres, every chair has a table for two facing the silver screen. It is licensed, I went for the coffee and my traditional first meal at a new location, a hamburger deluxe. You eat in the dark, there is a small button to summon a server, but I had all I needed. The food is medium-good, a little pricey, but you are paying for the atmosphere which can hardly be beat if you are, like myself, a die hard movie fan.
They did get me for a total of $19.15, so next time I’ll avoid the $9.00 burger and just go for the $2.50 coffee, which was excellent I add. Better than Starbucks.
ADDENDUM
I’m often asked how one learns so much about computers. It is a lengthy process of trial and error, mostly error, and never taking no for an answer. I won’t sugar-coat the frustration, but I have some unexpected good news from the second day of my trip. The one where I lost some primo photos because I forgot to put the SD card back in the camera. Well, I have news.
Although the camera states it has no internal memory, it must. Somehow, I recaptured the lost 24 photos. This is double-eerie, since there is no margin for error, I had to stop at the roadside, dig out my knapsack, take out the card, and place it in the camera. But lookie here, this is one of the snapshots. This is the rainstorm I hit in north Florida, where I quickly doubled back and ducked under the canopy of this abandoned roadside store. About two miles south of Jaspar, FL.
The building was so decrepit the rain was causing chunks of the asphalt shingles to slide off the roof just inches ahead of my front tire. If it had been windy as well, I’d have cleared out fast.
How did I get these off a camera without memory? I don’t know, but I’ll tell you what I did differently. I normally take the SD card out and transfer the day’s shots to a permanent computer. That’s how I managed to forget to put it back. But this time, I took the “memoryless” camera and plugged it into a USB port to recharge at the same time. So, the camera and the SD card were simultaneously plugged into separate USB ports. Surprise, there must be internal memory in that camera, and here is the pudding. I believe that is called serendipity.
[Author's note: Update September 2013: It transpires that these cameras do have a limited internal memory, generally around 26 photos. That is comparable to a roll of 35mm film, the most popular consumer size in the past. I emphasize that this memory is not mentioned in the documentation and no, it is not an intuitive feature for most people. Nor am I happy that this memory disappears when an external card is inserted. Building things that way is just plain stupid no matter who you are.]
Return Home
++++++++++++++++++++++++++
